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'His legacy is cringe': how Charlie Kirk became a meme among the young – even his supporters
It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted. Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death. Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted. But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message. Turning Point was always aimed at zoomers, and their verdict is in. There are probably a bunch of them who don't realize Kirk was a real person. And the less said about Erika the better.
As a side note, there are a whole bunch of retarded conspiracy theories around his death, because we can't accept that a guy could just be shot by a lone nut despite multiple videos. Even JD Vance isn't immune.
Zoomer humor might have done it eventually anyway, but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst. The ridiculous over the top cringeposting (such as people going like "this means war!") was not serious behavior. It was the behavior of people more obsessed with signaling how Cool and Brave they were to their audiences and like-minded peers. Throw in the conspiracy theories claiming that some trans witch coven, or Israel, or whatever other nonsense besides the literal guy who is on camera in the area who used his own family's gun and admitted to it to people in his life shortly afterwards, and how was it not going to become a joke?
If you act like a fool, people treat you like one. The reaction was ridiculously over the top, and that engineered its own mockery. They tried to force a martyr but that doesn't work easily when you're in a personal responsibility country and the lone wolf culprit is quickly caught and brought to justice. You can't form a meaningful protest or statement against anything, the killer was arrested the second he was found! There's no ongoing injustice to sustain anger against, unless of course you make shit up.
The only reason George Floyd worked even a little is because police are a government organization so blaming it on "policing" as a whole is reasonable in the minds of ordinary idiot citizens who don't actually understand how government works and that police departments in the US are highly compartmentalized from each other. And even that response was so large because COVID, people were bored and wanted something to do. You can't do a COVID era campaign in a non COVID time.
And as history has shown us, this was cringe. Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens, and even as you pointed out Vance himself) couldn't help themselves from being cringe. That's why we got incredible jokes like this.
Just to add finally, this was pretty much unpreventable. The right wing media atmosphere now is tuned to making outrage slop, and pivoting on a dime to being serious is just not happening. Internet pundits can't take his death seriously, because the slop machine is on full throttle.
Sigh. Look man, modhat off.
You're getting reported a lot, of course, but none of your posts are really rule-breaking, they are just... obnoxious. Because you're doing this schtick where "no one actually celebrated Charlie Kirk's death" (yes they fucking did) and the left wing media atmosphere is definitely as tuned to outrage slop as the right wing one. I don't think you are a troll or a Darwin alt, but you generally do not post good or interesting thoughts, just very weak equivocations. As someone who's been accused of that myself because of my squishy liberal sensibilities (now decaying like a gangrenous sore), what offends me about your posturing it that it often seems fundamentally disingenuous and I don't trust that you are being entirely sincere and not just trying to farm outraged responses yourself.
I am aware a lot of the celebratory posts about Charlie Kirk getting shot were obtained by skimming the worst people on X and reddit, which is always a goldmine of really bad takes if you're trying to assemble a wall of Chinese Robber mugshots, LibsOfTikTok style. But in my own social media orbit (i.e., people I know), I saw a lot of takes along the lines of "Well, murder is bad, but he did cause harm to marginalized people..." Or a smirking repost of his quote about how the 2A was worth a few dead children.
Do I personally know people who would outright celebrate an assassination? Noo... but a whole lot who would "read the news with pleasure."
I think this is bad and cause for worry and it's why I tend to put a boot on "fedposting," even if @gattsuru thinks I am overzealous about it. People who celebrate death, who advocate murder, who think it's funny when someone on the "other side" dies, who want violence, are bad people.
Being happy that someone ended up dead is fundamentally different than supporting their death. Everyone here must understand that distinction, else Trump's comments on Mueller would be more than enough evidence to condemn "the right wing" on this.
Someone I want dead would be like, Putin. I've said before I hope Ukraine wins enough they can drone strike him or give him death sentence or something. Someone I would not care if they died and maybe even be a little cheerful for but don't support their death for would be like, Logan Paul.
There are many people I dislike and would not be sorry to see go. I personally consider it gauche to celebrate death, even someone like Putin or the Ayatollah, though I certainly wouldn't be sad about them. But first of all, wartime deaths are fundamentally different. Second, I'm talking about people who are happy to say they think someone deserves to die for being on the "wrong" side politically. Or even openly advocating for violence.
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